04.52. LESSON 52

LESSON 52 In Romans 16:1-27, Paul heartily commends Phoebe, a sister who is going to Rome probably taking this Epistle, and, associating with him eight brethren, sends warm greetings to four groups of saints and twenty-six individuals, whom he has known elsewhere—eighteen men and eight women. He calls the names of thirty-two people, and characterizes many of them by particularizing, incisive phrases, fragrant with memories of closest associations. Should one wonder how Paul with so many heavy responsibilities, labors, and sorrows of his own can see, remember, and graciously wish to tell so many details, the answer is that Christ creates in Christians an unselfish interest in others.

These lively, interesting men and women constitute a cross section of the early church over the sprawling Roman Empire. Here is a little world of faith, love, work, suffering, and endurance, significantly coming at the close of the Book as a sample of the harvest from the seed sown in the Epistle. These really converted Christians believe all the doctrine of Romans, commit it to life, and move, both physically and spiritually, over a wide field. Albeit they pass before us in such rapid file, they are a living monument of the abiding truth that the oneness, and consequent lovely, satisfying interrelationships of Christians spring from their common relationship to Christ, who shares his life with them all, and expresses himself through their surrendered personalities.

It should be a source of comfort and strength to some sisters to note that the several whom Paul commends for "much labor" and Phoebe, "A helper of many," are all, except Priscilla whose husband is named with her, women unassociated with men. Possibly by taking advantage of the circumstances that they are denied homes of their own, these good women make their espousal to Christ purer and more fruitful (1 Corinthians 7:32-34). If this is the case, do they not far more than compensate for their loss? Under no circumstances can Christians lose. It should be helpful to some Christian women of every generation to think on these women, and the evangelist Philip’s "Four virgin daughters, who prophesied" (Acts 21:9). The Church and Satan In Romans 16:1-27, Paul uses the word "church" for the first time in Romans. The very fact that Paul, who is a master of order and government, finds no need for the word in his exhaustive treatment of all fundamental doctrines of Christianity, such as universal human condemnation, Christian justification, sanctification, and glorification, should help us to understand what the church is, and to see that all ecclesiastical hierarchy and institutionalism are contrary to its essential nature. Inasmuch as giving the church of Christ a mechanical, legalized title contradicts both the letter and the spirit of Christianity, when Paul finally gets around to the term "Church of Christ," instead of intending to give the church a stereotyped name, he must be thinking of Christ’s right, based upon its nature and stupendous cost to him, to own and use the church.

God imparts his own eternal life by means of spiritual birth to all who heed his call to repudiate and come out of the condemned world—man’s choice and God’s act. Men, thus rescued from eternal death and made partakers of the divine nature, compose Christ’s "Church which is his body…the bride, the wife of the Lamb." The church is therefore a divine creation, which shares the life of God, which Christ identified with himself as his body and bride, and which the Holy Spirit makes his residence—a profoundly spiritual relation of men with God, through Christ, in the Spirit, by the instrumentality of the word. The church is the company of men and women whom God adds together (Acts 2:47, margin), as they are justified by being buried with Christ in baptism, wherein they are also raised with him through faith in the working within them of the same mighty power of God that raised Christ from the dead (Colossians 2:12); adds them together for creative, sanctifying, maturing worship and work. Any other religious company added together by outer, human federation and organization into conformity and union is but Satan’s cheap counterfeit (one of his tares) of the church with its inner, divine, organic unity and uniformity. Because of its divine nature the church is deeply and richly human. As Christ’s physical body while he lived in it was his instrument of contact and service, so his spiritual body in which he now lives is his instrument for bodying himself forth to the world. By craftily beguiling and corrupting the church (2 Corinthians 11:3), Satan weakens the sole adversary of his unholy ambition for world-dominion. Were the church destroyed, he would be supreme "Prince of this world." Man cannot foresee the end of the cosmic struggle (Colossians 1:20) between God and Satan, who possesses superhuman knowledge, power, skill, and hate—"The deep things of Satan" (Revelation 2:24). But Paul’s, "The God of peace shall bruise Satan under your feet," looking backward to God’s promise in Eden to bruise the Serpents’ head (Genesis 3:15) and forward to its perfect fulfillment in the Serpent’s being "Cast into the lake of fire and brimstone... for ever" (Revelation 20:10), drives out all doubt about the final outcome and brings in "The peace of God, which passeth all understanding."

Peace and Doxology The manner in which Paul brings the bruising of Satan into this final admonition for the unity and peace of the church shows, I think, that he is clinching his teaching of the two preceding chapters, namely, that men in the church who cause trouble over secondary things—things about which Christians are as free to react one way as another, about which they must not contend for their own terms of peace—are tools of Satan, acting contrary to Christian doctrine, and are unworthy of fellowship. A church which is too small to allow freedom of conscience and wholesome co-existence of inevitable differences about such things is too small for "A habitation of God in the Spirit." In this connection, Paul teaches, as a precaution against the wiles of Satan, that there is a wisdom which keeps one ignorant of evil; that, on the principle that cleanliness best understands filth, one need not know sin by experience to be wise about it. The Book of Romans appropriately closes with a classic doxology: "Unto him that is able... the only wise God" (wisdom to contrive and power to effect the whole of Christianity) Paul ascribes glory forever. What is "The mystery which hath been kept in silence through times eternal," but is now made known in Paul’s gospel? It is, that apart from the flesh-centered, carnal principle of law, apart from all fleshly distinctions and human merit, God in pure grace freely gives eternal life to all humanity on the principle of the "Obedience of faith."

"The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you."

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